


Star Wars Episode IX:  Rise of the Gray

by batista



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), Gray Jedi (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28397289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batista/pseuds/batista
Summary: Kylo Ren has won and the galaxy is finally united under the First Order.  Following the devastating loss of their fleet and the vast majority of their members, the Resistance is spread thin throughout the galaxy.  While they work to regrow their numbers and capabilities, Rey bounces from planet to planet, always one step ahead of those hunting her.They hope Kylo Ren's fixation on her will allow enough time to restart the small flame of revolution.Meanwhile, Kylo Ren has lead with precision and dedication, consolidating the power of the First Order.  However, the fall of one Supreme Leader has revealed the power is not all protecting, and Kylo Ren's position is nebulous at best.  From within the First Order, he senses growing ambitions for his position.  Like Rey, he needs to stay one step ahead of those hunting him.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter One

Since the RESISTANCE escape from the planet Crait, the FIRST ORDER has secured most systems in the galaxy. 

The RESISTANCE had no choice but to flee and recover from the crippling blow. Of the over four-hundred RESISTANCE fighters that escaped from D’Qar, fewer than forty remained.

In order to escape total annihilation by the FIRST ORDER, the remainder of the RESISTANCE fled across the galaxy. Many went in search of others that felt the spark of hope and the means to fight against SUPREME LEADER KYLO REN.

REY, the last Force-sensitive aligned with the RESISTANCE, has been sent to a remote planet in an attempt to split the might of the FIRST ORDER as the SUPREME LEADER KYLO REN hunts for her. 

They hope that in KYLO REN’S attempts to capture her, they will have enough time to build the flame of the RESISTANCE

I was under no illusions. I was bait. It had even been my idea. Though many of the Resistance fighters had spent the previous decade fighting and hiding themselves, I had spent my entire life scavenging to survive. So when we had reached hyperspace after our escape from Crait, my mind was already working. They could track us through hyperspace. We only had whatever time it took for the First Order to organize a battalion to follow us. And we knew they would follow us. I knew he would follow me.

Leia had ordered a random hyperjump to any space port in the Mid Rim systems. Most were neutral at the time and would be relatively safe in the chaos that followed the destruction of the New Republic. Within hours, we were on a landing pad, Poe haggling with a junker who gazed at the Millennium Falcon with suspicion. Then credits exchanged hands. Leia, hood up and face hidden, lovingly touched the pilot’s chair one last time. I looked away when she leaned forward and kissed the headrest. The final piece of her husband was being whisked away, most likely to be parted out. Delicately, she pulled the gold dice from where they hung above the viewport and walked out of the Falcon for the final time.

The credits we gained from the Falcon’s sale bought us travel and papers. Leia, Poe and nearly half of what remained of our fighters chartered a ship together to the Core, away from the Outer-Rim systems controlled by the First Order. They would protect her as they searched for support from the wealthiest in the galaxy. Finn, Rose, and the rest dispersed throughout the Mid and Outer Rim on work details and mission trips. They were going to find sympathizers, boots on the ground, to replace those we lost to the _Supremacy_. And then there was me.

We bought me work papers, a history, an identity. Everything needed to be as authentic as possible. From birth to my new life, I needed a believable story because I was the bait. While the First Order would be hunting for their number one target throughout the galaxy, the rest of the Resistance could work in relative peace. We needed to leave a trail of bread crumbs for the agents of the First Order to follow that would be convoluted, time consuming, but just hinting enough to drive them follow me and not any of the other high-profile targets they wanted from amongst our ranks. We were going to use the obsession that consumed a dark corner of my mind that I knew was not mine. Leia and I both knew he would not stop, so we were going to use that as best we could. It was really the only weapon we had left.

The only stipulation I had was I could keep my name. While I rehearsed my new role over and over in my mind, I would keep myself. I really only had my name left to me. No staff. No possessions. I was leaving the people I had grown to cherish, and my mind was no longer entirely my own. I wanted to keep the last thing that was mine. Poe and Leia worried it would be too obvious and lead the First Order directly to me, so we compromised. Rey would just be a nick name I would introduce myself as and they could pick some ‘real’ name for the paperwork. I don’t remember what it was.

As I boarded a work cruiser that was bound for my new destination, the captain read it off to me, I answered, “Call me Rey, sir.” He nodded, made some sort of note on his data pad for the next official in line, and sent me off to the bunks. It was going to be a day’s worth of travel as they stopped to pick up or drop off people at their stations across the galaxy before we arrived at my destination. That was fine by me. The week being on the run was wearing on me. I needed the isolation.

It was apparently too much to ask. The sounds of the ship creaking around me and hushed voices of other recruits in adjacent spaces abruptly cut off. The silence was deafening. After a week of vague impressions and subtle emotions I knew were from some other system of the galaxy, he came to me. Or I went to him. I am not sure how to describe it. I still could not see his surroundings. Just him.

I could tell he knew I was there. He was facing away from me again, but he did not turn immediately. A few moments passed before he said, “Alert me of any new developments.” Then he turned and began to walk; I moved to follow, pushing myself up from my assigned bunk. Eventually he stopped in an abandoned corridor of the cruiser I was on and turned to face me.

Both of us tried to maintain a blank expression, sizing each other up. We both knew it was a façade. But I was sure as hell not going to be first one to acknowledge it. He was far more impatient than I. Where he had grown up making demands of those around him, I had grown up scratching slashes into walls. He finally was the first to speak. “Where are you?”

“I’m not telling you,” I answered. It was neither familiar or distant. I refused to acknowledge any connection but could not help the disappointment or longing I felt deep down. I knew he felt the same. We could not hide anything from the other. Not after the _Supremacy_ and not with the connection ever present.

“I will find you.” It was not a threat. It was a statement.

“You’ll try.” I was not going to give him an inch. He would take a lightyear.

“You’re a refugee in your own galaxy that I control. There’s nowhere you can go that I won’t follow.” He wanted control over the conversation because it was the only thing in his life he did not have control over now.

“I beat you before. I can do it again.” I was goading him on purpose. My annoyance was mounting and my head was starting to cloud with exhaustion. I knew it was petty because neither of us could control when we would appear to the other. But there was no one pettier than Kylo Ren.

“You wouldn’t need to defeat me.” This was not the same bravado he had just been emulating. He said this quietly, his expression the same as on the _Supremacy_ when he offered me his hand. The switch from his military self to this was jarring. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I looked away from him then. “I can’t be a part of this, Ben.”

He stiffened at the name. “You were more than fine learning from a murderous Jedi.”

That was a low blow. “I didn’t know that at the time,” I said defensively. “And I came to you when I learned about that.”

“But you didn’t stay.” His accusation was bitter.

I had no answer to that. There was no convincing him I had to leave, that he was going down a path I could not follow.

“Why do you hold on?” he asked suddenly. The question made me look at him again. There was genuine curiosity in his eyes.

“It’s all I have.” I do not know why I answered; it was automatic and reflective. I also knew that there was no hiding anything from him in this moment. I could feel the Force drifting between us, completely open. I could not close him off, did not know how. But he actively chose to be open to me. He took in my sadness, loneliness, hopelessness, none of which I had shared with Leia or Poe or Finn before we had all gone our separate ways. I felt his emotions echo back to me: apprehension, desperation, isolation.

He did not answer. Eventually, he disappeared as he had on Ahch-To. But I could still feel him strongly in the Force, despite our distance. Though there was bitterness coating his mind, beneath that was a deep sense of kinship and compassion. I had felt it on the Supremacy as he and I looked to each other, lightsabers in hand. I had felt it when he had extended his hand to me. Despite everything between then and now, he still maintained a thread of hope for me deep within himself.

I found my way back to my assigned bunk, rolling into it, begging for sleep. As I drifted in that in between world of waking and sleep, I heard him. _It’s not all you could have. Not anymore._

* * *

The air was hot and dry. The sand nearly burned through the soles of my shoes. Dunes stretched as far as the eye could see beyond the settlement, where they jutted into a pale blue sky. The double suns beat down on me, adding new freckles to the old as I marched into the outpost I was stationed with. Pulling my goggles up from my eyes and the cloth from my mouth, I took a deep breath of the filtered air in the room.

“How’s it out there?” asked a fellow patrol officer. He leaned back in a chair, a deck of cards in front of him.

“The storm is winding down,” I answered, crossing the room to sit at the table across from him. Glancing at the pattern in front of him and the deck next to it, I already knew he had lost the game. He’d realize it with his next hand. “People will start to go back out soon.”

“Damn,” he muttered, eyes shifting between his new hand and the pattern of cards on the table. “Might as well head back out now then. I lost the blasted game anyways. Again.”

I was able to hide my smirk by replacing the cloth across my nose and mouth. “Gotta be smarter than the cards, Jalen.”

“You’ll need to learn to control that tongue, Rey,” he answered, opening the door. Heat blasted into us, but the swirling sands had calmed significantly. A few people were beginning to leave the safety of their homes for the stalls reopening. “It’s going to get you in trouble.”

“I can handle myself,” I replied, grim. _That’s why I’m giving it to you_. Jalen did not notice my sudden silence.

We continued down the street as more people started to meander from one stall to the next. Stall owners were beginning to shout about their wears, wanting to make up for lost time. However, through the rising din of shouts and shuffling feet, I sensed a shift in the air. Before I could turn, a shout rose over the noise. “Stop that thief!”

“Here we go,” Jalen muttered. I gave a heavy sigh in turn, running with Jalen to the hysterical shop keeper.

“They went that way!” she screamed hoarsely through the shawl that clung to her face, coughing. “They stole my best sand gear!”

I did not bother to stop as Jalen continued to speak to the shop keeper. Curious thoughts from eaves-dropping local patrons and mild annoyance of nearby shopkeeper filtered through the air to me. A completely different emotion stabbed through the air at the shopkeeper’s persistent shouts: panic. I grasped onto that panic, racing through the street ahead of me.

“Which way they headed?” Jalen’s voice crackled through my earpiece.

“Towards the residence district. They’re panicked. We could probably herd them towards the fountain and cut them off at both entrances.” I swung my staff from across my back as I ran through the now unfortunately full street. I slid between the people, using my small frame to weave through the pressing crowd. My target did not seem to have the same fortune; I felt them stumble, grab a wall for support, and push off again.

_You will take the next right towards the fountain_. I threw my thought towards them, weighing it down Forcefully as my Light slid into their mind and anchored itself there. They stumbled once more as the idea took hold. I smiled as I felt them skid around the corner, taking a hard right while narrowly missing being hit by a small speeder. Their hand tried to grasp a slightly smaller one, sweat causing them to slip once before gaining a firm grip. _Two_.

“What’s your position, Jalen?” I puffed through my com. “There’s two of them.”

“Acknowledged. East side of the fountain,” he crackled back.

“That was fast,” I answered. “They should be running into you within two minutes.”

“Some back-up arrived,” was his reply.

A brush of trepidation fluttered through me. _Why would they send back-up?_ The unsettling feeling was shoved aside as another, more forceful sensation abruptly diverted my attention. My targets went down as if they had hit a brick wall.

Within seconds, I skidded into the fountain plaza and sucked in a breath. A dozen storm troopers lined the plaza, blasters trained towards the center. A pair of teenagers were kneeling before a tall man all in black. He held a blaster, trained on the younger of the two thieves.

“Rey.” My name jerked my gaze from the First Order general to my partner. His face looked resigned as he motioned me forward. Keeping the general in my line of sight, I approached Jalen. I could feel the attentions of the thieves shift between the blaster directly in front of them and their assailant. The fear and hate flowing off them was palpable.

“Your commander’s praise is obviously well founded.” The general turned his face to acknowledge Jalen and I, blaster still trained on the thieves. “When he learned you were in pursuit of a criminal, he even encouraged me to see your teamwork in action.”

“That is very kind of you, General Hux,” Jalen replied. I remained silent, not expected to speak directly to the general as a junior officer. My face was still covered from my chase. _Does he know what I look like?_ The man had never seen me, but that did not mean he had not been given a description at the very least. _Why is he here?_

“He said you also have an interesting knack from gaining the cooperation of your targets. Very rarely do any become repeat offenders or cause you trouble.” Hux’s eyes moved from Jalen to myself and my heart dipped lower. _Why did I have to keep my damn name?_

Jalen did not have a response to that, though he shifted uncomfortably at Hux’s tone. “I didn’t realize that was a concern, sir,” he answered eventually. “Commander Motin has only expressed satisfaction with our team.”

“Quite.” Hux’s clipped tone and incessant stare suffocated me beneath the cloth hiding my face. Then he smirked, and I tightened my grip on my staff. The familiar rough, chipped metal pushed the rising panic back in place. It simmered just below the surface of my Light. “Would you please demonstrate your technique? I am curious.”

Jalen glanced at me. I released the breath I had been subconsciously holding. My hopes of not saying a word evaporated. Though Jalen was the team leader, I normally handled prisoner communication. Taking a deep breath, I walked forward, blocking everyone and everything from my thoughts, save for the two prisoners. Distantly, I felt Hux back away, though he kept the blaster trained in front of him. _It’s set to stun_. Goosebumps ran up my spine; the feeling of exposure was disconcerting after weeks of silence from the First Order. I kneeled in front of the two thieves, setting aside Hux’s unsettling stare. Slowly, I spun my staff around behind me and settled it on the hard dirt. Just as slowly, I reached up and pulled the cloth from across my face. I allowed a small sad smile to grow, a genuine reflection of my concern for these boys. They were young. My slight pressure against their minds with my Light emphasized my empathy with them. Though their glares did not shrink, their hunched shoulders relaxed slightly, some of their fear released from their muscles.

“What’s the deal, gentlemen?” I asked quietly. The two mirrored the confusion I felt briefly from the Frist Order personnel. The older of the two recovered quickly, however, and put on what he must have thought was a brave face. He simply looked tired to me. Determined, but tired. Taking his cue from the elder, the younger boy also recovered himself. _Sixteen, maybe? Definitely not older than thirteen for the little one_.

My Light touch seemed to not have been enough; neither boy was relenting. I held out my left hand without breaking eye contact with the older boy. Footsteps sounded through the plaza and after a few moments, Jalen thrust an old sack into my hand. Their bag of stolen goods that had been confiscated by a storm trooper. One by one, I pulled out the items until the bag was empty.

I finally spoke. “You lads have been busy. Five sets of goggles, ten multi-tools, a chip scanner, and several loaves of bread. You’re poor. You’re starving. Your lives depending on these thefts, it seems.”

_Gotcha_. That had thrown them off balance and I was in. Their uncertainty and fear flowed around my thoughts and I gently pushed ahead, weaving my Light into their deeper thoughts. A brief glimpse of each theft, especially through the younger boy, confirmed my suspicions. They were more than desperate. The panic they felt while we cornered them was not entirely out of their fear of capture. They were at the point of no return. They would have done anything for money.

“So why are a couple of dune kids desperate enough to steal from four stalls this morning?” I asked, turning my stare from the older boy to the younger. _Brothers._ “And where’s your mother?”

The younger boy looked away and a sadness momentarily overpowered me. When he let out a soft sob, his older brother had to close his eyes against their shared pain. When he met my gaze again, he was resolute. I also could not miss the wetness of his eyes.

“I see,” I whispered, piling the items back in the bag. I lifted it up and Jalen took it from me. Gently, oh so gently, I pushed against the younger brother’s thoughts, wanting to know about their mother. The information was at the fore front of his mind. A glimpse of a sickly woman lying in a dark room, sparsely covered by a thin blanket. A chest heaving cough forced its way out of her before I slipped from the boy’s mind.

“Well, gentlemen, I’ve got a few options for you,” I said quietly. To their credit, both boys drew themselves up and met my eyes as I addressed them. They were certainly expecting the worst. “You’ll be required to personally return these items to their rightful owners, but beyond that, whatever happens will be up to you.”

Surprise reverberated from the First Order personnel. These soldiers were not accustomed to their superiors offering second chances or real choices. _I want you to join me_.

“Your first option would be to sit in our cells, a day for each item stolen. Three standard weeks each to be served concurrently.” Both boys opened their mouths to respond, the older looking panicked. But I held up my hand for silence. Quickly, both boys closed their mouths and I continued, “Your second option would be for me to assign you to local work details. You’d be committed to those details for a full standard year. It would be scut work.”

The older boy perked up at that. “Would we be paid?” he asked quickly.

“You would be paid the local exchange rate, yes,” I answered, “After paying off any fine you’d be given.” I felt the satisfying clicks as a new plan trickled into their minds. I added, “You would most likely be assigned to a moisture farmer five or ten clicks to the south. Both his farm hands joined the First Order infantry some weeks ago.”

“Mother?” the young one squeaked, voice cracking. “What about mother?”

“I could convince the farmer to house her until she recovers. At that time, she would be required to find work to support herself,” I answered.

The relief that poured from the two boys was thick and fast. Without a second thought, the older boy said, “We’ll take the second option.”

“We’ll have to take you in while we contact the farmer. Once the assignment is confirmed, a patrol officer will escort you to your home to collect your things and mother. I expect you’ll be headed south within the next few hours.”

Without warning, the younger boy lunged at me and a deeply thrumming warmth surrounded me as he enveloped me in a hug. The older boy quickly followed with a murmured, “Thank you,” into my shoulder. I could hear the blasters disengaging around the plaza as Jalen hissed, “They’re _hugging_ her, you blasted idiots.”

I soaked in the hug a moment longer before I backed away onto the balls of my feet. “Alright, gentlemen, up you get. The team to our left is going to escort you to the command post.” Both boys stumbled up as I motioned to bravo team to step forward. With one last look back at me, they followed their escort towards the stalls where they would return the stolen goods as they made their way to the outpost.

I reached behind me for my staff and used it to push myself up. The tension left my muscles and the vague exhaustion rolled into my mind. Between the foot chase and the prods with the Force, I was feeling drained. But I still needed to deal with General Hux.

A deep breath filled my lungs and I centered myself, turning to face my partner and the general. The calming breath was quickly forgotten as I saw his smirk was even bigger. “That was masterfully handled, junior officer. Well done.”

“Thank you, sir,” I replied, nodding in what I hoped appeared like respect rather than wariness.

“Your partner says you’ve only been posted here for about four weeks, correct?” Hux asked, turning and nodding to a nearby stormtrooper. The trooper approached and handed the general a pad, which he tapped on and read. “And your record here says you’ve bounced from system to system as a patrol officer for a few years now?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, the story coming to me easily. “I left my birth world after my parents died. I had always wanted to serve and help people. I just didn’t find my fit until I came here to Tatooine.”

Hux nodded and handed the pad back to the trooper. In his moment of distraction, I extended my Light to him, settling tendrils of it around his thoughts. A violent chill ran up my spine. _Will need to report to the Supreme Leader. Found her_.

He continued to speak to Jalen for several moments. I did not hear a single word, failing to control the desperate panic rising within me. I needed to make a salvage plan. _This is happening too soon. Much too soon._ It was not until I felt Jalen’s hand on my shoulder that I was jolted back to the plaza. Hux’s hand was extended and a brash plan latched itself to me. I took the general’s hand, only half hearing his words thanking me for the interrogation technique display. At the physical connection, I quickly slipped my mind against his, strengthening the tendrils I had already draped there. As gently, but firmly, as I could, I imprinted, _Nothing to report to the Supreme Leader from Tatooine_.

As I released General Hux’s hand, I carefully watched his face for a shift in thought. He remained passive, as he turned to leave, the stormtroopers falling into formation. A final, brief look into the surface of his mind sent a wave of relief through me and I took a deep breath: _Nothing to report to the Supreme Leader from Tatooine_.


	2. Chapter Two

Unceremoniously, I dropped my bag at the door, stripped the sand encrusted clothes from my body, and stepped into my small refresher. It was not until the tepid water had been beating against my muscles for several minutes that I felt the tension dissipate from my body and mind. A week had passed since the First Order had conducted their inspection of Tatooine. Word had reached our outpost that the planet’s gangsters had finally relented their power and now an official First Order base had been established on the far side of the planet in Mos Espa. Tatooine had been the last Outer-Rim planet to fall to the First Order. Since the inspection that followed my interrogation display, I had been tense; waiting for the hammer to fall. But no stormtroopers had invaded my home. No attempted kidnappings. It had seemed my half-cocked attempt at skewing Hux’s mind had worked and no one realized who I was, trapped on a First Order planet.

I ran the water until it was cold, ignoring my guilt over the waste. I changed into my night wear slowly and lit a fire. Once the light filled most of my adobe home, I powered off the electricity. The luxuries I had were still foreign to me, despite how much time I had had with them. Regressing to my scavenger ways of Jakku brought me a measure of comfort; hence why I lived by fire-light rather than electricity. It was one of the few options of control I had. The nights on Tatooine became nearly frigid when the twin suns set, drawing me to the flames. I settled in front of them comfortably and let my eyes drift shut.

_Breath. Just breath_. Water breaking over jagged rocks began to echo in my ears. My fingers ran over damp, rough stone. Fresh rain pattered around me and I inhaled deeply, seeping myself into the memories of the few days I spent on Ahch-To. _Reach out._

Slowly, I allowed myself to feel the Force. The flames became brighter against my closed eyelids. I could sense the dulled presence of those that lived in the adobe homes around me, winking slowly into my senses as I reached farther and farther out. Most were already asleep, needing to be awake before first light. My senses continued to expand outward to the edges of my small town. More life surrounded me, quiet if not content. Throughout the sleeping individuals, I could sense emotions all too familiar to my own: wariness, discontent, fear. Since the introduction of the First Order to the planet, these feelings had been growing. More than once, I had felt the stirrings of rebellious thoughts. But just as quickly, they were smothered by a deeper hopelessness. The destruction of the Hosnian system followed by the rushed retreat of the Resistance had eventually reached a back-water planet such as Tatooine.

My brow furrowed in concentration as I pushed farther, testing my limits. Reaching across the sands, I could pin-point small settlements that extended a few clicks outside of town. The feelings of these nomads and farmers were less distinct. A general sense of discontent drifted through the night. Every night, I could reach a little bit farther.

The sounds of my fire crackling became muted and suddenly disappeared entirely. A secondary presence pressed against my mind, firm and resolute. Opening my eyes, I did not see him immediately in the dim light. All in black, he was facing away from me, his hands clasped behind his back.

Neither of us spoke for some time. These meetings had become standard, a haphazard part of our lives. The standard days had turned into months had turned into years. He had been chasing me planet to planet, always a few too close steps behind. He knew by now I was pulling him on a wild goose-chase, diverting resources to a pointless mission. Always our short conversations started with an interrogation that lead to either shouting or sullen silence. I honestly did not want to speak with him and closed my eyes to ignore him. However, the silence was eventually broken. “You’ve been able to reach farther recently.” He was trying to sound casual.

“I’ve been practicing,” I replied stoically. At my words, I heard him finally turn. I opened my eyes, meeting his briefly. He looked older, even in just the short time since we had last spoken. _Ruling the galaxy does that_ , I thought sadly. He looked like his mother in that regard. I drew my Force back in to myself. I did not trust him, despite him not pressing his advantage in his control and knowledge. I knew that he could overpower me easily if he chose, despite my practice. For all the good a few old books and endless hours to study and practice could do, he was always just a few too many steps ahead of me.

He must have sensed my disgruntlement. He frowned at me. “I have no intention of hurting you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m not willing to trust you.” That drew out an ugly scowl momentarily and I smirked back at him. Our antagonistic exchange was far more comfortable than the familiarity that swirled between us beneath the surface of the Force.

“Where are you now?” he asked, casual again, making his face passive once more. “Despite my meditation, I still can’t see beyond you. I know there’s a fire. I can smell rain, but also sand. A curious combination.”

“You know I can’t answer that,” I sighed. I filed away the knowledge that he could see the firelight and smell the rain and sand. I could sense nothing of his side of the connection, and that bothered me. Whereas his meditation was improving his side of the connection, mine was not. _You need a teacher! I can show you the ways of the Force!_ He had not extended his offer again. My rejection on the _Supremacy_ and again on the transport cruiser had closed that part of his soul to me.

“Won’t answer,” he corrected, still trying to gaze around me. His firm push was still leaning against my mind. It was not overwhelming, however, and he remined just outside my thoughts. “Can you see anything of my surroundings?”

_Where are you? Why can’t I see your surroundings? Can you see mine?_ His thoughts flittered through my mind. I did not wonder at his questions; I would ask the same if it was not for my pride. And my hurt. My sense of failure. I refused to answer in the privacy of our shared thoughts. I would not be that familiar.

Pushing away the memory of the _Supremacy_ , I pressed back against the firm push of his mind. Unlike my own barriers, his gave way some; at least those surrounding his physical location. The deep hum of electrical current filled my ears and the scent of fuel permeated everything. Visions of smooth, wide floors flooded across my vision. The scream of a TIE fighter sounded over-head and a burst of air flow moved my hair against my neck and face.

I pulled back. The shock of returning to myself was abrupt and forceful. I fell backwards onto my elbows. My hand reached up to my hair, still wet and plastered against the back of my neck, incapable of movement. _That was new._

“You’re on the flight deck of a star destroyer,” I answered, sitting up. He simply nodded. Momentarily, I felt his mind push against mine. I held and when he looked away, the push receded. “Why are you letting me in?”

“It’s easier to let you in small parts then to keep you out of everything,” he said, stepping forward to walk around me. He was looking everywhere around me. “Your meditation is strengthening your connection to me. I can always feel you now, at the back of my mind.”

“I didn’t realize that was me,” I said, slightly exasperated at myself.

“Don’t worry, I’m working on it, too.” He flashed me a smirk and it was my turn to scowl. We were quiet for some time. I watched him circle around my home. A look of concentration had developed on his face, his gloved hands raised slightly from his sides, fingers spread. His hand nearly knocked into the lamp overhanging my bed but stopped just before touching it. Slowly, he pressed his hand forward until it brushed the lamp, fingers pressing more firmly against its metal surface. With a real sense of growing fear, I watched him run his hand down the length of the lamp and with a smug sense of satisfaction that trickled from him through the Force, he flicked the switch and it blazed with light.

“You’re running out of time, Rey,” he said softly, looking at me once more. His tone caused my eyes to move from the lamp to his, my own going wide. He exuded a deep sense of satisfaction and I saw a flash of an island surrounded by water. He’d seen that same island in my mind when he had attempted to interrogate me on _Starkiller Base_. The image confused me, which only served to increase my fear.

“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping the trepidation from my voice. _What does Ahch-To have to do with anything?_

He did not answer immediately. He just stared at me, still exuding his arrogant air of accomplishment. _I know there’s no rain._ His words echoed in my mind and he was gone. The sound of the fire and the now gusting wind returned in full force.

My sleep suffered. Normally I would have attempted to reach further across the planet, the meditate and practice. But the realization he had narrowed down my location halted any desire to stretch out with my Light. Not knowing what to expect, I sealed myself off from the Force as completely as I could. The isolation of my mind was suffocating after opening up so far beyond myself. The risk was not worth the connection, however. I did not know how much he knew, or how. _Did Hux remember? Did he find me while meditating?_ After watching him touch my lamp, I knew there was possibility he could find his way in given enough time and effort. _You’re running out of time, Rey_. This was happening too fast. Thoughts swirled. _Should I run? Does he know where I am? Is he trying to flush me out?_

After hours of being unable to sleep, I resigned myself to defeat. Leaning under my cot, I pulled a book off the stack of several. Either I would continue to read the old book, or I would fall asleep. I stifled a yawn against my hand, opening the leather cover.

My shrill call signal startled me awake, the book slipping from my chest to the floor with a strong umph. My hands fumbled around above me, knocking across my desk before finding the comm. “Jalen, what’s up?” Through the cracks of my window covers, I hazily thought the sun had not completely risen quite yet.

“There’s been a report of a problem your way,” Jalen replied. Through the comm, I could hear him struggling to dress. “You’re the closest and there are no other available teams.”

“What?” I scrambled out of my bed and started to pull my own clothes from their drawers. “Where’s Delta and Omega? They were on last night.”

“Oh damn, you wouldn’t know. There was a riot next settlement over last night. Delta, Omega, Charlie, and Alpha were called in for that. Sigma and Tau were pulled to cover last night. We’re all that’s left.”

I nearly dropped my comm. “A riot?” I whispered. I had not sensed anything last night through the Force. But as the sleep was quickly falling away, I could feel the silence I was not used to. The memory of my conversation with Kylo Ren came back to me. I was still cut off from the Force. All I could feel was the distant flow of Dark in a deep recess of my mind that I had come to associate with him. 

“What was that, Rey?”

“Nothing,” I replied, a little too harshly. “Send me the coordinates for the call in. I’m headed out the door now.”

“Will do. ETA in ten,” he said, the distinct whine of his speeder, slicing through the momentary static. “And Rey. Be careful. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Jalen’s warning echoed through my mind as I sprinted down the eerily empty street; I could not help but agree with his sentiment. All non-essential personnel and civilians had been ordered to remain home and indoors due to the riot I learned from flicking through radio stations. The commander feared the disturbance would spread to our town and we simply did not have the patrol units available to handle another riot. The lack of life was disconcerting.

I wanted to reach out across town with the Force. I was blind, and I could feel the building apprehension in the air. But between Jalen’s warning and Kylo Ren’s half knowledge of my location, the risk of being found through the Force outstripped that of an ambush from some discontent moisture farmers. I fell back onto my instincts and moved carefully.

Warily, I approached the building reported to patrol. There had been a drunken fight between two men within the hour, according to the readout beeping in my ear. Toeing the broken glass strewn across the walkway outside the cantina, I pulled my staff from my back. Briefly, I considered waiting for Jalen, but decided against it. The area was already deserted, the patrons long gone once they realized the fight had been reported. The longer I waited to start the investigation, the longer it would take to finish it. I also felt the inescapable need to get out of the exposed roadway. There was something drawing me into the cantina.

As I had guessed, no one was inside. The silence raised the hair on the back of my neck all the same. _Where’s the barkeep?_ Something was not adding up, but I could not put my finger on what it was. Even if the other patrons had left, the owner would have been here at the very least. I reached the counter and glanced behind it. More broken glass, most likely from being thrown across—

It hit me suddenly and I turned swiftly, scanning the cantina again. There was no blood. No broken furniture. Besides the broken glass outside and behind the bar, nothing was out of place. Cold trickled down my spine and I moved back towards the entrance as quickly as I could. _It’s staged!_ I pinged my comm as I started to raise my staff defensively across myself, kicking chairs out of my way as I backed toward the door. “Jalen! It’s—”

Frozen. Could not move. Static crackled through the comm as my finger remained frozen on the activation button, an uncharacteristic silence echoing back to me from Jalen’s end. I threw my Light against the constricting barriers that held me, feeling the Force around me in a desperate push. I was surrounded by a Dark, seething storm.

“You’re too late, Rey,” he said. “You’re out of time.” My heart rate skyrocketed. Kylo Ren walked into my field of vision. Outside, I could hear boots stomping on the gravel and glass; stormtroopers establishing a perimeter. This was not our connection through the Force. This was flesh and blood.

I glared at him, unable to answer as he held me still. He walked forward, and I redoubled my efforts against the constricting energy pressing on me from all sides. Sweat began to bead on my forehead, neck, and back. As he reached toward me, my desperation managed to break through his swirling Darkness with a strike from the Force. I gained enough control to snarl, “Don’t touch me!”

There was a momentary hesitation. But then his hand continued, and he pulled the staff from my right hand. With a passive face, he also recovered the comm from my left hand, crushing it beneath a boot. “Your commander was more than accommodating. But I doubt your partner would be as helpful. You incite an annoying amount of loyalty from those who grow close to you.”

He stepped back and the constricting Darkness lifted from around me. Immediately, I rushed towards the back hall I assumed he had come from. The effort was wasted. Within seconds, I was frozen and pulled back to face him. His hand was outstretched once more, and he had a sullen look.

“You have two options,” he said coldly. “You can either be restrained, or you can be free. I was under the impression you would prefer the latter. Escape will not be possible.”

“I’ve escaped before. I can do it again,” I said defiantly.

A small smile tugged at his mouth. The bastard _smirked_ at me. Once again, the constricting pressure was released. I remained where I was, fists clenched. “You were only able to escape previously due to a combination of teamwork, skill, and luck. You are far beyond the reach of your friends, and you’re out of luck. You do not have the skill to defeat me. You have no escape.”

“You don’t know if I’m alone or not.”

“Yes. I do,” he said quietly. At his strong gaze, I looked away. I could not feel him in my mind, or even pushing against my thoughts. But the eye contact made me uncomfortable. He stared at me for several long moments before saying, “Your personal items have been collected and are aboard the transport. Would you prefer to walk to the ship under your own power?” The unspoken second option hung in the air.

Without meeting his gaze, I nodded, scowling. Strong anger filled me for the first time since my isolation began. The first time since my fight with Master Skywalker; the fight on the _Supremacy_.

Kylo Ren did not move. His smile was gone, and his brows were furrowed. Stepping forward again, he turned my face toward him, a firm grip on my chin. The anger spiked, and I could taste metal on my tongue. “Control your emotions,” he whispered. “Hold onto that anger. But if you use it, I will contain you.” He released me, stepped back, and motioned to the door.

Without a word, I turned, feeling his eyes boring into my back as I walked out the door into a ring of stormtroopers. _He’s not going to let me out of his sight._

_No, I’m not_. The words were clear as if he had spoken them. _You cause problems when not being directly supervised._

_Get out of my head_ , I hissed back, anger spiking again.

_Make me,_ he challenged. _Your mind is open to anything or anyone_.

I did not answer; I knew he was right. When he had trapped me, I had lost all caution in trying to escape. I could feel the Force, my Light, around me, enveloping and piercing. It was tumultuous at best. Briefly, I closed my eyes, trusting my feet to continue forward on their own. I forced my lungs to take in air with deep, slow breaths. The anger did not dissipate, but it did regress. No longer did it pull all my focus in on itself. As we approached the shipyard, I opened my eyes, replacing the anger with fierce determination.

_Control_. A smug sense of satisfaction seemed to drift from Kylo Ren. I refused to answer and felt a twinge of self-disgust from the small amount of pride I felt deep in my chest, a Dark speck flaring in my Light.


	3. Chapter Three

My cell on the transport was plain and solid. There were no panels in the walls or ceiling for me to rip apart and climb through. The door was thick with no obvious handle or keypad. I was denied furniture. When I was led into the barren room, my unasked question was answered: “You’re resourceful.” The door sliding shut behind Kylo Ren sent a resounding note of finality through my mind.

However, this was not isolation. In my mind, I was never alone. I kept my barriers up, but I could still feel Kylo Ren’s presence bearing down on me like a distant storm that constantly undulated through the Force. Whereas on Tatooine, he only occupied a small valley of my mind, being so close on his small transporter made him all consuming. I ignored the brooding silence echoing from him, but the intrusion quickly wore thin after isolation in the Force for so long on Tatooine. To distract me, I explored the meager cubic footage I was allotted. Try as I might, I could not use the Force to open the door; a mechanical latch was certainly in use, but a deep Darkness prevented me from accessing it. I was unable to so much as unscrew the lightbulb harshly shining down on me. No chances were being taken. I was no longer being underestimated.

There was no sense of time in my cell. At some point, my light dimmed, but never fully extinguished. Eventually, it grew bright again. Sleep was an impossibility, paranoid of being any more vulnerable than I already was. Constantly on alert, I stared at the door. No sound came from beyond it and trying to sense beyond it was frustratingly impossible. Whenever I would try to press past it, a solid Dark wall resisted me. My nerves began to slowly fray. As always, a swirling Darkness seemed to surround my Light at all times. His constant pressure was just as grating as the forced physical isolation. Constantly being alone, but not, was disorientating.

At one point, the dark pressure inside my head seemed to almost gently caress my mind. Slowly, my eyelids closed. I jerked awake suddenly, finding myself on my side. Panic jabbed at me, unsure how long I had been asleep. _Don’t,_ I thought as the presence tried to lull me again. It retreated after a moment’s hesitation, returning to the brooding overwatch it had been previously committed to.

Despite my best efforts, my body made the decision for me. I vaguely felt myself fighting to stay awake as I slid sideways down the wall. A weary relief channeled to me from the Darkness as I laid, exhausted, on the floor. Then I was gone.

* * *

Everything was different when I woke. Most disconcertingly, I was sure I was on a much larger ship, and the ship was in light speed. Hesitantly, I opened my eyes. A massive viewport covered the entire wall to my left and the never-ending white lines of the stars we were racing by confirmed my suspicions. My heart sank. I brought my hands to my face and let out a frustrated yell.

Weeks spent on Tatooine, alone. Months waiting for reports on Resistance movements, alone. Years learning more about my friends through information communiques than from them directly. Alone. The weight of the loneliness crushed me in that moment, the silence deafening and my yells echoing against the viewport. My frustrated yells broke into frustrated sobs and I struggled to control my ragged breathing. Tears fell, and I only grew more frustrated as I lost control of my emotions and broke down. Years of loneliness, isolation, patience, all wasted. Captured. No way to communicate my location or status to the Resistance. They would never know I had been caught. A black hole was anchored in my chest and I sank deep into its horizon, and I finally just let go of the little control I had. There was no point. 

My tears and sobs eventually stopped, and I wiped my eyes on my dirty sleeves, still wearing my officer’s uniform. Taking a deep breath, I placed my hands on the floor, and pushed myself up. 

My heart sank. Leaning against the wall three meters across from me was Kylo Ren, and I had no clue how long he had been there. He met my eyes, but I quickly turned away, unable to accept how he was looking at me. Kylo Ren felt pity; it rang from his eyes and his Darkness. He did not have the right. I stood, letting the silence stretch uncomfortably between us, unwilling to acknowledge he had seen my hopelessness. Resolutely, I turned to the viewport, unwilling to acknowledge him or the heavy air settling between us. He did not move to leave, just stared at me. Despite the deep sense of isolation gnawing at me, I wanted nothing more than for him to leave. His presence was suffocating in such close proximity. There was nowhere in the cell where I could avoid his gaze and no way to escape his Darkness pressing gently against my Light. I remained unmoving, staring out the viewport, arms crossed in front of me. On this ship, _his ship_ , there was nothing I could do. The black hole in my chest threatened to pull me back in. I closed my eyes to force down the renewed tears and echoing loss.

Frustration rose again at the thought of being completely at the power of Kylo Ren. Something needed to change. I may have been more patient; but he was well versed in waiting in dreaded silence. The longer the stalemate continued, the more emotional I would become.

“What do you want?” I asked, opening my eyes and staring out the viewport at my reflection. My eyes were red, my face blotchy. My voice had been strained, quiet. Not the persona I wanted to convey.

“I felt you regaining consciousness,” he answered, his voice neutral. “I wanted to be sure you were aware of your situation. You’re—”

“Resourceful. I know. And I am obviously well-aware of my situation.” My frustration was slowly spilling over to a low thrum of anger. He had no right to be here. It pushed me to finally look away from the viewport. Unlike my first cell on the transport ship, there were accommodations. It was an actual room. Sparsely furnished and certainly nothing could be used as a deadly weapon. But it was far more comfortable than I was expecting. I finally met Kylo Ren’s gaze again. The pity was gone, replaced by cool calculation. His shoulders were tense, and his arms were crossed in front of him as well. 

“I’m not going to attack you.” My blunt words threw him off guard. 

“I find that hard to believe.”

I did not reply. He had every reason to think I would attack him. All those reasons were why the bed was welded to the floor and there was nothing long or sharp within my reach. The silence began to stretch uncomfortably long once more. 

“Why couldn’t I feel you on Tatooine?” I asked suddenly, not sure myself where the question had come from. But the distraction helped keep my frustration under control.

“I cut myself off from you when I found where you were hiding,” he answered. “When you were able to discern so much detail of my location, I knew you would block me as well, not wanting to risk your location being revealed by accident. By doing so, you would not notice the disconnect as I made my way to Tatooine.”

The blatant manipulation smacked me in the face. “You made me think you could find my location through the Force when you actually couldn’t. You already knew.”

A small, lopsided grin flashed across his face. “Hux wasn’t the only person submitting a report of their inspection of Tatooine. You tried, however. The attempt at altering Hux’s memory was not terrible. He did not notice until he was asked directly after I noticed the inconsistencies between his report and the others.”

“What gave me away?” I asked, my curiosity overriding my momentarily vague anger at his grin.

He snorted. “What didn’t give you away?” he retorted judgmentally. I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off. “Your manipulation of the Force was obvious. How often does a duster planet like Tatooine gain such a gifted officer with such success? The only explanation would have been a Force-sensitive with knowledge of their capabilities. We knew the Resistance was fleeing to backwater planets; we knew you would be most comfortable on a desert world after all this time of running. Hux’s only disappointment was that you were the only Resistance operative on the planet.”

It was painfully obvious with his analysis laid before me. Embarrassingly so. “How long have you known?” I asked.

“We captured a group of Resistance fighters five standard weeks ago,” he answered. “Upon interrogation, they revealed the Resistance plans. I suspected Tatooine immediately and sent Hux directly there. Hux’s return and our Force-communication confirmed those suspicions.”

_Stupid._ I thought, frowning at him, the frustration threatening to overwhelm me again. My placement was so obvious, knowing his perspective. He knew enough to guess where I would be. In hindsight, my use of the Force was excessive, between my use for my disguise and my night time practice. _So stupid_.

“Naïve.” My frown deepened as he verbally replied to my thoughts. Where he had been cold, calculating in rehashing my imminent discovery and capture, his voice had softened. “But not stupid. You were ill-prepared for the effort we put behind trying to find you.”

At that, I looked away; I had no reply. While I had other questions, the all-encompassing feeling of being surrounded intensified. _The effort we put we put behind trying to find you_. Reaching out with the Force, I could sense thousands of lives surrounding me aboard the massive Star Destroyer, none of whom I knew and all of whom I knew had no sympathy for my entrapment. Just as on Jakku, I was surrounded by people while simultaneously being the most isolated person there.

_You’re not alone_. It took all my self-control to not look to him; I clenched my eyes shut to stop myself. I could hear the rain pattering against the rock that composed my hut; smell the wood burning in my fire; feel the rough blanket around my shoulders, and the smallest touch of his fingers against mine. “Why are you doing this?” I whispered, eyes closed against the trailing stars of the viewport.

_You shouldn’t feel loneliness when you’re not alone_. His voice and the memory he coaxed from my mind was so comforting and intimate. My will to remain apart was waning as my exhaustion settled into my mind.

“Can you leave?” I whispered. I could not bring myself to speak with him through our connection, not even sure if I could. The betrayal still simmered between us, just below the surface of his calm concern and my isolated indifference, resonating over the years since our fight aboard the _Supremacy_. I wanted news on the Resistance and the galaxy; I wanted the kinship I felt amongst the X-wings; I wanted the understanding I felt in the firelight. My logical mind won out. I did not want news from him. I did not want kinship with him. I did not want understanding from him. As tempting as it was, it was dangerous. Too dangerous. I had fallen into that trap before. I could not afford to do so again.

Almost seemingly out of respect of my comfort, he answered aloud, voice back to its cool demeanor, “I will leave.” After a moment longer, staring at me, he turned and left through a door that was paneled like my walls. It hissed shut behind him. For several moments, I expected him to return, overturning my power in the terms of my captivity. The door remained shut, however, and I let myself drop to my knees, my willpower gone.

The cold of the metal was sinking into my bones within moments. Belatedly, I realized that I should have used Kylo Ren’s openness and gained information, rather than turning him away. I should have tried to find out what had happened during my time of exile on Tatooine while the rest of the galaxy swirled between strategic plans and maneuvers. Instead, I lost sight of the Resistance while he watched me internally lose control. While he seemed at complete control of everything and everyone around him, I no longer even had control of myself, body or mind.

Bitterly, I reached over towards the bed and summoned the blanket to the floor with me, putting my back to the infuriating stars that left stripes across the backs of my eyelids as they drooped heavily. I could not help the pang of betrayal that cut across me once again. It was gone within seconds, however, as I could not distinguish whether I felt it against Kylo Ren for keeping me captive, or against the Resistance for leaving me alone. I dozed, guilt bubbling deep in my soul, thinking of the Resistance fighters who gave me up and knowing they were dead. Deeper still, I was afraid to find how much I did not care.

* * *

My captivity was not what I expected. I was given a single rule: do not attempt escape. I was not given access to any area from where I could escape more easily, namely the hangar bay. Otherwise, I was given free reign and total freedom. When the officer, a woman who could not have been much older than me, read the information from her data pad, I had simply stared at her for a full minute before replying, “That can’t be right.” The officer simply flipped the data pad so I could see the orders myself. White font against the black screen verbatim verified the information.

I had been limited to two square kilometers of the same dusty roads and adobe buildings on Tatooine. Reaching into the desert with the Force had been the limit of my mobility. Now, despite being trapped on a Star Destroyer, I was not sure if I would be able to explore all of it. It was massive. Massive enough to get lost in. That was something I planned taking advantage of.

When I tried to hand the pad back to the officer, she refused, saying, “Supreme Leader Ren ordered it for your use. It will also give you access to various parts of the ship.” 

Drawing the pad back towards myself, I looked down at it, thinking of what I must have been missing. Then I quickly looked up to the officer, cutting her off as she seemed about to speak. “Where’s my pack?”

She froze momentarily and I sensed she had been hoping I would not ask about these particular items. She sighed and said, “Lord Ren has declined to return your personal effects to you. Clothes and other such essentially have been provided for you in your quarters.” No destroyed lightsaber. No Jedi texts with which to continue my attempts to repair it.

The officer waited several more moments, anticipating more questions. I continued to watch her, questions coming to me in a mad rush, but none of which the officer could answer. When I remained silent, the officer gave a quick nod and left, the panel door remaining wide open. I was immediately gone.

* * *

The only sense of time I had was the dimming of the lighting throughout the ship at regular cycles. Sixteen hours on, eight hours dim. Certain areas of the ship were dark as the surrounding space when not in use or when their artificial night cycled in: troops barracks, mess halls, training galleries. Other areas blazed constantly bright: the bridge, the hangar, the main common area of the medical bay. I managed to smuggle a small, dull knife from the mess hall. Almost without thinking about it, I returned to my room at the start of every night cycle and scratched a small notch in the wall across from the viewport. Some nights I would stay and doze, never able to fully fall asleep; others, I would leave immediately, unable to unsee the thousands of analogous marks that always remained just below the surface of my memory, buried in the sands.

The inhabitants of the metal world did not acknowledge my existence as I moved among them. They neither hindered nor helped me. They simply went about their lives and I moved through their world as a specter. I had abandoned my patrol uniform for the most part. The pants and shirt remained in my room, favoring the simple black clothes Stormtroopers wore under their uniforms. Despite my semi-integration, I remained achingly apart. Units on the same cycle patterns as one another were families within the ship that was their home. Tens of thousands of enlisted men, infrastructure personnel, and Stormtroopers existed around me and not one had spoken to me since the officer had handed me the data pad some twenty or so wall-slashes ago.

After joining the Resistance, I had grown used to being surrounded by friends. Once more, I was as isolated as I had been on Tatooine, as ordered by Supreme Leader Ren. No one was to speak to me or interact with me. I was to be left entirely alone. He simultaneously freed me physically while trapping me with nothing but my mind. It was an emotional whiplash.

In those initial weeks, all contact with Kylo Ren ceased. I rarely saw him on the ship, and if we were ever in the same area at the same time, I actively avoided crossing paths with him. For his part, he ignored me, not even acknowledging my existence if our eyes happened to meet. Those surrounding him gave frequent updates to him, speaking fast and low, their words muddled enough in the air between them and me that I could not understand them. I had thought briefly of trying to gain information through these chance meetings. But unlike Kylo, Hux did not ignore me. He watched me diligently, as if he guessed the thought had crossed my mind to eavesdrop. I had no way to communicate anything I could learn regardless as communications were a restricted sector. I decided against that particular battle.

More curiously, I lost nearly all sense of Kylo in the Force. Even when I could see him, it was as though he was a simple radar technician that worked on the ship. The recess of my mind where our bond resided was quiet, almost subdued. When I tried to approach it, it grew even dimmer, as if he were pulling away from me. Once more, as he had done just prior to finding me, he was pulling away from the Force. Why, I could not guess. I was already captured, so I was not sure what else he had to hide.

Time moved continuously within the star destroyer, while simultaneously not moving at all.

A deep thrum began to echo through the ship into my mind as weeks continued. Between the isolation and curiosity, I sought it out. The sound was not unpleasant; just a constant through the day that either seemed to draw nearer or farther as I explored the ship. It did not come from the same part of the ship every day and I constantly felt I was tracking an animal rather than trying to pinpoint a mechanical abnormality. I found the source the first and only time I had ventured to the bridge alone. Rather than approach through the main doors that personnel filed through, I crawled above it through maintenance hatches and walk-ways that were integrated into the infrastructure of the ship for quick and convenient routes to perform repairs. It was a system that was a vast improvement upon the old Star Destroyers developed by the Galactic Empire, many of which I had helped gut in the Jakku desert.

I could not see the source of the sound below as I walked through the veins of the ship, but it was growing more pronounced as I moved forward. According to the schematic on my pad, the viewport of the bridge was mere meters away when the echo deepened to a point where it was felt, not heard. It was not mechanical or electrical, but on this ship, there was nothing it could be otherwise. I did not understand how officers could be on the bridge while that echo droned on. It resonated in my mind to the point of distraction.

Swinging below the walkway, I crouched in the dark meter tall space between the ceiling of the bridge and the walkway. Carefully, I used my stolen knife to slowly remove the screws holding in the meter by meter paneling. I reached lightly out to the panel with the Force, holding it in place so bridge officers would not notice it move while I worked. Once the screws were safely in my pocket and the knife held between my teeth, I quietly lifted the panel to look below.

He stood there, looking forward while General Hux spoke, as always beside him. Occasionally, Kylo Ren would glance to his left at Hux and give input on strategic positioning of forces. Hux’s pad projected miniature planets and even smaller moons with circling First Order ships. One by one, they cycled through them, deciding the fates of worlds lightyears away. As I watched him, I realized the sound was indeed not coming from the ship; it was the Force radiating from him. It was gravitational.

“Any other reports, General?” Ren asked as the last system faded away from the pad.

“We are now present in every star system of the galaxy. Resistance positions are all under blockade baring any calls for surrender. All will be out of supplies within the month,” Hux summed up the previous reports.

“Well done, General. Do we have any intelligence on which Resistance position holds strategic control over the rest?”

“Not as of yet, Supreme Leader,” Hux answered, a short wave of disappointment flowing with his answer.

“Then set course for the nearest position. We will simply take them one by one until we find their leadership.”

“Very good, Supreme Leader.” Hux stepped away, leaving Kylo Ren staring forward for several minutes. I could not bring myself to move. _Every system_. The thought sunk into me as I closed my eyes for a steadying moment. _Every base. Surrounded_.

_Yes, Scavanger_. _All of it._ My eyes snapped open and had he not frozen me there, I would have bolted and let the panel fall to the bridge. But his hand was raised toward me and neither I nor him moved. He kept me there, letting his mind sink into mine and I saw it all. The summoning of the First Order armada after the destruction of the _Supremacy_ and Snoke. The bold, careful moves from system to system. Reconnaissance droids fanning down to planets, followed by TIE fighters. Infiltrated bases. Interrogations of faceless men and women, leaving them mindless. Systems falling one by one, each time a disappointed and savage _Not here!_ ringing across the memory.

The horror I tasted like bile from the flashes of burning villages and ransacked cities kept me frozen after he lowered his hand. He had been distant for weeks. I had not even realized he had unhidden himself, that the deep humming had been him. Now I knew why. He had finished what he started with Snoke and promised to me: he ruled the galaxy. There was nothing the Resistance could do. They were finished.


	4. Chapter Four

His mind was completely open through the bond. Oppressively so. I knew his thoughts as soon as he did. After weeks of isolation from him, I was surrounded by him and his Darkness. It was a constant storm swirling around me as I stood in the small, calm eye. Even in the relative safety found at the center of his Darkness, I could feel buffeted tendrils swing against me at spikes of emotion from him. He no longer had any reason to be secretive.

It was obvious now why I could not sense him. He had been maneuvering his armada into position for weeks, simultaneously surrounding Resistance positions to prevent them from helping one another. He was taking no chances. He controlled every variable, dictating every outcome. Once again, he had outclassed me in anticipating the other’s moves. While he distracted me with the guise of freedom, he clenched tighter around the Resistance. He knew I would attempt to disrupt his plans by any means necessary if I knew what was happening. _You’re resourceful_.

Despite his openness, I blocked all my thoughts from him. I sheltered myself in my Light, knitting a cloak around me in the Force. I needed to hide in plain sight from those around me and make it harder for him to locate me on the massive ship. Though I could not fully hide myself from him when he kept the bond so wide open, I did not have to make it easy for him to seek me out. And he constantly sought me out.

Rather than being left to my trepidation and worry for the Resistance, he would regularly interrupt his day to find me if we were in the same area on the ship. I never let him get too close, constantly moving away from him at random, trying to prevent him from anticipating my next choice in direction by not anticipating it myself. I found myself frequenting more obscure areas the Supreme Leader would have no reason to be: smaller mess halls, infrastructure facilities, deserted hallways that seemed to lead nowhere in particular, but were far removed from his daily life. Thankfully, his life had a schedule, an expected pattern. Within days of learning of the impending loss of the Resistance, I was able to gauge his basic geographical schedule within the ship. Avoiding his calm Dark storm became second nature as I learned to recognize his presence in the Force instinctively.

For my part, the wondering was not entirely random if his focus was elsewhere. The Resistance was about to fall; it was only a matter of Kylo Ren reaching the systems harboring the leadership. I needed to reach them first. Where I spent weeks wondering at random learning the intricacies of the ship, now I moved with purpose: leave this ship.

* * *

My knife was clenched in my teeth, my screwdriver was spinning in my hand. I channeled the Force through my palm to increase my strength, almost stripping a screw in the process. I took a shaky breath, moving to the next one, retracting some of the Force I was channeling. _Focus_. _Focus. Focus._ I repeated the mantra constantly. I could feel Kylo Ren at the boundaries of my mind, as always. As my focused mind moved from one screw to the next, my subconscious projected an image of the Jedi text I had stolen from Luke on Ahch-To. Long nights on Tatooine had lent themselves to meditation and study. I had never been more grateful for desert boredom than in that moment as I recited every word as if I was holed up in a service shaft above the medical bay. I just hoped he would not accidentally stumble upon the real me in his search of those walkways; I was only a hundred meters away, breaking into the med bay’s emergency shuttles.

His suffocating Darkness was not far away. Every night, he searched for me. After disregarding my presence and then tolerating my avoidance for weeks, he now sought me out daily. Tonight was no different. I could tell his patience had been waning. It had been more than a month since he had revealed the impending loss of the Resistance to me and he still had yet to catch me in my wonderings through his ship. With the added frustration of finding merely a half dozen Resistance operatives between the three systems he had taken, his patience was dropping inversely with his rising frustration.

_Good_. I thought callously. _He can deal with some isolation_. The final screw eased out of its hole. I took a deep breath, centering myself. While carefully projecting the sounds of the isolated maintenance shaft around me and envisioned the memorized words from the text, I quietly lifted the paneling and eased myself into the med bay emergency shuttle passage.

When I landed, I held my breath for several heartbeats. He was still moving toward me, but not directly. For now, the projection was solid enough to be convincing through the Force. My Light wisped around it, as if I were meditating on the words. The lights stayed dim in the passage as I moved forward, assessing the readiness of the pods and the ship’s position on my data pad. we were passing through a system unfamiliar to me. The Star Destroyer floated just outside the gravity well of an inhabited planet, waiting for feedback from recon droids and information from the lieutenants on the ground. In theory, a Resistance base was situated on one of its ten moons. I had time though; every moon and the planet were inhabited. The reports would be hours coming back.

I placed my hand against the door of pod three, carefully feeling the electrical hum through the door’s circuits. A frown pinched my face as my Light followed them all simultaneously, looking for the locking and tracking mechanisms. One by one, I rerouted them to maintain their current. The door hissed open. Scanning my pad, pod three registered as locked and quiet. I allowed myself a small smile, heart beating a little faster. I secured my pack into a hanging bin and set the navigation to the largest city on the planet I could feasibly reach. Hiding in plain sight.

The lights all pinged green, signaling my pre-flight was clear. With a final, satisfied deep breath, I reached out across the tendril of my Light anchoring my projection. It was still undiscovered above the med bay and gently, I pushed it forward. I imagined the brush of my clothes against the metal grating and my soft foot falls as I carefully stood. I pictured creeping along the scaffolding, away from the pods and back towards my cell, as if I was headed back to make my daily mark on the wall. The farther it moved from me, the more my influence began to fade. It only had to last long enough for me to clear the tractor beam of the ship. I pulled back from my projection to pinpoint Kylo Ren one final time.

He was gone. In the few minutes I had ignored him, he disappeared. I held my breath, indecisive. The only explanation for his disappearance from the Force would be him purposely hiding himself from me for the first time in more than a standard month. Which would mean he had discovered my ruse and most likely had already found my location. He knew I was trying to run. If I just punched it, I risked possibly dragging him with me down to the planet, if he had not already warned the bridge to activate the tractor beam in the event of a shuttle pod launch. If I tried to find him on the shuttle with me, time would be wasted, potentially preventing me from taking off at all, assuming he did not already have technicians hacking into the shuttle’s software to override the clearance I had given myself.

“Don’t bother launching.” I let out the breath as a groan. “You’ll just waste fuel and time.”

I turned to find him leaning against the shuttle frame. A glance to the control panel showed the door as closed, locked, and pressurized. I glared at him, refusing to answer, irritated at my own trick being used against me.

“You almost managed it. Your concentration slipped at the end. All the sounds and textures were right with your clothes, the walkway. But you forgot about the bond.” His voice was heavy through his mask, making the almost praise sound trite. Patronizingly, he tapped the side of the helmet.

He was goading me, trying to appeal to my curiosity. I _did_ want to know how he found me. But I did not want to give him the satisfaction by asking. I turned away and disengaged the shuttle, powering down the system, refusing to rise to the bait. The temptation was weaker when I could not see him staring at me.

I grabbed my pack from overhead, half summoning it with the Force out of annoyance and a desire to exit the shuttle as quickly as possible. As I approached the shuttle entrance, I saw he had removed his helmet. And he was smirking. He extended his hand palm up and I crossed my arms across my chest. His smirk instantly faded to a scowl before stating, “Screws.”

I hesitated, confused. I pulled the screws from my pocket and dropped them into his gloved palm, not touching him. He stood to the side, giving me room to pass through the shuttle door. I quickly moved through it, taking several extra steps into the gleaming hallway within the medical bay. He was not right behind me as I anticipated. He had stepped into the shuttle, screws in one hand, the other outstretched to the panel laying on the floor where I had lowered it from the walkway. His helmet lay on a counter. The panel lifted into the air, delicately hovering in its proper place. One by one, the screws were lifted, lined up, and twirled into their positions.

He stood for a moment, staring at the panel, and I stared at him. Even in mundane tasks, his control over the Force was precise. Momentarily, I felt a stab of dejection; in a fair fight, I would never win against him. Then his com beeped, and he pressed the receiver on his wrist, “Report.”

“Resistance presence confirmed, sir,” a voice responded crisply. Hux.

Kylo’s face hardened, and he stepped out of the shuttle, not stopping as he summoned his helmet. I quickly followed, my deep seeded annoyance at being caught instantly replaced with mixed emotions. Apprehension curled at the back of my mind. I felt no real fear for myself. The time had come and gone for Kylo Ren to do anything to me. But Resistance was another story. He had personally killed dozens in his search for these bases. The half dozen he had already discovered languished in the cells in the ship. This group would be no different.

“You’re loud.”

I snapped back to the present, becoming self-aware of my thoughts. I had loosened my grip on my self-control. I was open to the Force, my Light flowing lightly around me and down the bond between us. With irritation, I drew it back to myself, closing the bond to superficial, purposeful communication.

“You’ve become adept at shielding your presence,” Kylo continued when I did not answer him. “Your control is pretty remarkable for a self-study.”

“You learn well when you have no other choice,” I responded coldly.

A shot of annoyance crossed from him to me at my sarcasm. “You did have another choice, Scavenger. You chose not to take it.”

“Threatening me with a lightsaber on the edge of a canyon is not a choice,” I shot back. My frustration was getting the better of me as my worry mounted. We were in an area of the ship I had never been to, spiking my anxiety. I had not known of the other operatives until they were already on ship, hidden behind guards and doors. Unknowns make quick escapes difficult at best.

“That’s not what I meant.” He rounded on me so quickly, I nearly walked into his chest. I took a large step back. His swirling Dark had washed over me momentarily, nearly drowning me in his myriad of emotions: confusion, loss, dull anger, betrayal. “I offered you everything. Instead, you chose to rot on one miserable planet after another.”

I did not answer as he held me with his gaze, brows furrowed, eyes seething. The silence stretched between us for long moments before I felt controlled enough to answer, “I couldn’t leave them to die.”

The silence stretched briefly before he forcefully yanked his helmet over his head. He turned again and resumed his march. I waited several moments before following him, maintaining some distance between us. He did not close his thoughts off to me, but they were as much in a rough flow as his Dark surrounding him. Each new thought was disregarded quickly, barely brushing against my mind before he pressed it away. I saw glimpses of our sabers flashing against a backdrop of red; deep meditation and serenity in his mind; whispers of dreams he could not quite remove as they repeated on end.

The smell of fuel washed over me as we walked through a set of wide doors. Our arrival to the hangar bay distracted me from catching the memories as they flowed from him to me in quick succession. Surrounded by a squad of stormtroopers were five Resistance members, one of which was familiar, though I had known him for mere days before we separated.

Poe Dameron’s eyes flitted from the trooper standing in front of him, to Kylo Ren, finally landing on me. He gave no hint of recognition, even on the surface of his mind, where his thoughts were easy to read. Curiously, I allowed my Light to drift over his thoughts. He was supposed to be in the Core with Leia, procuring much needed financial support. Him being in the Outer Rim did not bode well.

“It would seem the best pilot in the Resistance is on board my ship yet again,” Kylo said, the storm troopers moving to allow all five fighters to see him fully. The modulated voice echoed in the still hangar. He crossed his arms across his chest before saying, “Can’t be too good a pilot to get caught twice.”

“I tell you what,” Poe drawled. “You loan me one of those TIEs and I’ll race you. First to the edge of the system wins.”

“I think not,” Kylo answered. “You never returned the last TIE you stole, nor the Stormtrooper you took with you.”

I glared at the back of his head at that comment and shoved some of my displeasure down the bond forcefully. _That was rude._ He did not deign me with a response.

“The Stormtrooper stole me, technically,” Poe responded.

“It’s only a matter of time before FN-2187 is found along with the rest of the Resistance.” The shift in tone was instantaneous and palpable. “Where is the rest of the leadership?”

“Fat chance I tell you.” Poe’s demeanor had changed just as quickly as Kylo’s.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Kylo said, his voice pitching lower. “It’s simply easier for you if you do.”

“Unfortunately for you, I enjoy my fun a little hard and rough,” Poe challenged with a smirk.

Kylo’s anger spiked across the bond and more quickly than I thought possible, Poe was levitating inches off the ground, face fixed in an equally angry grimace. I could hear his choking as he tried, only half-successfully, to pull in air. Within moments, without even thinking about I was foolishly about to do, I acted.

My Light rippled from me as I stretched out my hand and entangled itself in the seething, roiling Dark extending from Kylo, wrapping around Poe’s throat. Small tendrils wriggled and wormed their way through the gaps between his Dark, separating strands and making my way to Poe. I brushed against him, creating a barrier, separating the Dark from his body by only mere millimeters. It was enough; Poe sucked in precious air.

I could feel the retribution thrumming through Kylo for me. I honestly do not know what he expected when I followed him down to the hangar. But judging from the formidable frustration echoing through my mind, I knew it was not this. With a growl, he dropped Poe, allowing him to fall to his hands and knees, gasping. His Dark, no longer roiling, but gliding stealthily, flowing around us, turned on me. Where I had entangled our different Forces together to separate Kylo from Poe, he used that entanglement to bind me. He squeezed my Light as if it were my throat and I felt my head go light and the world spun around me. The suffocating Dark was permeating my thoughts, making me dizzy.

_Let go_ , it whispered against my ear. I felt my hair brushed against my neck, sending goosebumps down my spine. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit the inside of my cheek to keep my focus. I clamped my Light more tightly against Poe, using him as an anchor. But the Dark drifted around me, between strands of my Light, through me. _Let go of the Force_.

The temptation was mounting, drawing me in, intoxicating. It felt like dozing in the dry heat inside my AT-AT, where the desire to just fall into the dark was enticing to just get away from the slow burn I felt from breathing the dry, dusty air. I knew if I let go, the pressure pinching against my Light would ease.

But I had endured worse. Gritting my teeth, I opened my eyes and snarled, “Get out of my head!”

He met my heated gaze with his own frustration and we both froze in the Force. Then, layer by layer and strand by strand, my Light and his Dark disentangled from each other hesitantly, waiting for the other to break the ceasefire. Finally, I clutched my Light tightly against me and his Dark whirled around him agitatedly. Glancing back to Poe, he sneered, “Get ready for an extended stay, pilot. Your scavenger has just bought you a long-term prison sentence.”

* * *

I helped the engineer carry Poe to the brig. The resemblance the room shared with my original cell was striking. It also reminded me that a bed and a viewport did not make my new quarters any less a prison. I was one data pad away from being driven mad by horizontal streaks flying past me on one wall, and vertical scars staring hauntingly down at me from the other.

We propped Poe up in the far corner. Though he had not been truly suffocated, he must have been seeing stars at some point. His eyes had been dazed until the last several meters. I refused to let him walk, wanting him to rest both his mind and his body.

“You’re an idiot.” I did not spare his emotions on this. Slowly, we lowered him to the floor and leaned him against the wall.

“Yeah, well. You’re not wrong.” He gingerly leaned his head back against the wall. The engineer was kneeling on the floor beside him while the other three members of their team settled nearby, notably away from the door. Their eyes regularly, and warily, shifted from us to the single entrance to the room. “You’re not much better than me though.”

I could not disagree. Hindsight was quickly catching up to me as I processed what I had done rashly in the moment to protect Poe. Kylo had been dangerously close to successfully persuading me with the Force, all the while with limited acknowledgement on my part of what he had been doing. I was more troubled by how willing my subconscious had been to submitting and letting it all go to float under his influence in the Force.

“That was dangerous.” My gaze flickered back to Poe’s face out of my reverie. He was frowning now. “He didn’t even break a sweat, Rey. He wasn’t even trying.”

The truth of his words stung more than they should have. It was only a matter of time before the luck I had been riding with Kylo Ren was gone. Despite the familiarity that had grown with the bond, we were strangers in nearly every way. We may have saved each other on the Supremacy, but that was where the trust stopped.

“What about you?” I changed the subject. “You’re supposed to be in the Core, fundraising to get me a new staff.”

“I was never headed to the Core. The was the trick. Only one person knew where everyone was headed so that if the First Order caught anyone, they would not be able to give away the rest. Everyone else only thought they knew where everyone was.”

“He found them.” The image of the tortured Resistance fighters twisted quickly through my mind. “Five weeks before catching me. He has a presence in every star system in the galaxy now and has surrounded every base.” The information stopped the fidgeting of the others in the cell.

“He find anyone else?” Poe asked carefully.

“He’s gone through a couple bases, found a few here and there.”

“How many are here?”

“A half dozen,” I said unevenly. “But before he found me, he hunted down pockets of Resistance holding out. There….. there were no survivors. How many of us are left?”

“Can’t be more than a couple dozen,” Poe answered tiredly. He closed his eyes, head still tilted against the wall at his back. “We’re going to have to figure something out, Rey. Preferably before he finds anyone else.”

I did not answer right away. I twisted around Poe and sat against the wall to his right, also letting my head fall against the wall. “I have a feeling that we won’t have a choice in the matter, Poe.” Judging from the satisfied hum I felt reverberating down the bond, I knew the choice we were going to be given was not going to be in our favor. 


	5. Chapter Five

“We’ve been on the moon since the split,” he had told me, “acting as a focal point of smuggling supplies to the operatives in the Mid Rim and Core.” Dragging his hand through his hair, he continued, “I haven’t seen or heard from anyone but the single operative during supply exchanges every few weeks. It had been safer that way. The fewer people we all see, the less we all know, the safer we all are.”

“Spies,” I said. “He didn’t need to find the one person with the info. Not anymore.” 

Poe nodded. “I think it was a bribed junker that sold us out to a First Order spy. We didn’t send the usual guy. He had gotten caught up in a cantina fight and had sat the night out in the local cells for knocking a Corellian out and through the bar. I picked up the slack.”

The chips were down, the hands were played, and we were waiting for the final round. We were outmaneuvered, outclassed, and outgunned. Much as both Poe and I hated to admit it, we were screwed. After a day of deliberation and debate among the dozen or so of us Kylo had corralled into his brig, we found only one possible solution.

“We’ve got to cut a deal.” The engineer finally said what most of us had been thinking for hours. My eyes were crusty from lack of sleep. I had not left the cell, figuring my escape attempt and brief attack on Kylo would not preclude me from staying. I did move the few others Kylo had picked up along the way from their individual cells. A stormtrooper had moved to stop me, but a firm push with the Force into the wall 15 feet behind him readily changed his mind. He comm’d it in to the bridge. Kylo himself had told the trooper to not interfere unless escape was attempted. Deadly force was approved.

“We can’t cut a deal,” Poe said darkly. I sympathized with his point of view. Kylo did not compromise.

“There’s a point where we gotta call it like it is, Commander,” the engineer said. “And we’re there. He’s on his way to hunting down the rest of the Resistance. The minute he has all of us, he could line us up, shoot us for the whole galaxy to see, and that’s it.”

“The Resistance is more than just us,” Poe argued.

“Would you fight back?” I asked quietly. When there was no answer, I looked up to see the whole group watching me. I had not realized they had heard me.

After the silence drifted on, one of the technicians Kylo had found in the first breach of a Resistance base answered. “If I was some nobody on a Mid Rim or Outer Rim planet, no. Not after hearing the First Order had shot down the entire Resistance armada, then hunted them to extinction.”

“I’m sorry, Poe,” I said. “But the people we appeal to… if Kylo were to execute all of us and show that to the galaxy, those people would not have the heart to fight against that. They can’t afford to. Better the devil you know. Better to survive.”

Poe looked from me to those circled around the room. There was a tenuous consensus between all of us and he knew he was outnumbered on this.

“You do know what our leverage is here, right?” he said, looking straight at me. “We only have one thing to offer him here, since we don’t know anything.”

I swallowed. I knew it the second I started entertaining the idea of a deal hours before when the conversation had stalled on escape plans. “Yeah.”

“What are you suggesting?” the engineer asked.

It was like my mouth had gone dry and a deep knot had formed in my chest, making it hard to breathe. I swallowed, took a breath, and tried to plaster on a confident smile I failed at faking. “He gets me. Me in exchange for Resistance lives.”

“He’ll value you over destroying the Resistance?” a pilot asked dismissively.

“He’ll value my power in the Force over destroying the Resistance,” I answered knowing that it was true, though omitting other factors that would tempt Kylo into keeping the Resistance alive for the exchange.

Poe’s eye lingered on me worryingly for a few minutes, obviously thinking. Finally, he nodded and stood, walking towards the door. “Let’s get this over with,” he muttered. He rapped his knuckles against the door, the metal releasing a staccato of taps.

The trooper appeared outside the cell door and pressed the comm link into the room. “What, prisoner?”

“We’d like a meeting with your Supreme Leader in regard to a deal,” Poe said, fitting back into his nonchalant stance and tone.

The trooper stood still, as if he did not believe what he had heard.

“Chop chop, trooper,” Poe said, tapping the syllables out against the door. “This is a limited time offer, so it’s in your best interest to get your Supreme Leader down here.”

The trooper nodded and disappeared again. Poe leaned against the door frame, idly tapping a quick beat against the door. Several more minutes passed before the trooper had returned.

“The Supreme Leader was not on the bridge. General Hux ordered the Jedi girl be escorted to the bridge to await him there.”

I stood without meeting Poe’s eyes. As I passed him at the door, he squeezed my shoulder, pouring out some support. The gesture made me smile and I briefly touched him with my Light, hoping to give him some reassurance.

“I don’t need an escort. I know where the bridge is,” I told the trooper outside the door. He pressed a button and it whooshed shut behind me.

“The General insisted.”

I looked into the trooper’s visor with a frown before drawing on my Light. I pushed it gently towards him and it wrapped around him, sinking into his mind. I covered every superficial thought I could find and gently pushed them deeper, leaving his current thoughts blank. “I don’t need an escort,” I reiterated, pushing with the Force.

“You do not need an escort,” he said without hesitation. “You are free to go to the bridge.”

Like hell I was going to the bridge. I already knew Kylo Ren was not in the bridge when the trooper went to alert him that we had a deal. I also had no intention of having this conversation in the public view of the bridge with Hux and dozens of possible First Order officials there to witness it.

If I was going to lose my freedom to him, I was going to do it on my terms.

* * *

The deep thrum I felt seemed muted almost. Most definitely there, but not the same constant pressure it had been when I had first been trapped on the ship. My connection lead me down corridors I had been down only a few times. I knew where I was headed before I was even halfway there.

Despite the fact I knew it would not work, I held my small data pad to the keypad. A shrill bell and angry red light confirmed my suspicions that the hangar was still off limits to me. Looking through the double paned window in the door, I could see him standing alone, centered in the open field of stars beyond the hangar exit. A skeleton crew gave him a wide berth as they ran maintenance protocols through the sleep cycle.

I pounded on the glass to get the attention of a crewman. Several glanced my way. But a hasty head swivel towards Kylo Ren lead to a quick dismissal of my obvious request. No one was going to let me into the hangar by the obvious order of their Supreme Leader.

Heaving a sigh of frustration, I stepped back from the window, thinking. Without a weapon, I was not going to get through the door, and only if that weapon was able to blast through either steel or double paned glass. I glanced at the keypad. Touching my fingers to it, I allowed my Light to filter through the cracks in the paneling to access the wiring and energy there. Not surprisingly, the wiring was more complex than the door to the emergency shuttle.

_You could always just ask_.

No sooner had his words entered my mind did the door slide open, a green access light flaring on the keypad I was still hacking. The smell of fuel hit me, and I glared at his back as I stepped through the entrance.

_I tried knocking_.

_Pounding on the glass hardly counts as knocking_.

The crew continued to nervously go about their work, now giving me as wide a berth as Kylo. I caught one openly staring at me. Meeting his eyes, I gently pressed against his mind, blanketing his thoughts the same way I did to the Stormtrooper. _You will take the rest of the detail and leave_.A glazed look filled his face. He grabbed a passing teammate and started to half drag them towards a service door. The rest of the crew quickly followed suit, having waited for someone else to take the lead. Within minutes, I was alone in the hangar with Kylo Ren. I stopped several meters behind him, crossing my arms, waiting.

_Are you going to stand there forever?_ He asked. This close, I refused to communicate with him through the Force. He waited several minutes for an answer before turning to face me. We held each other’s gazes for several moments before he spoke aloud. “You were supposed to go to the bridge.”

“Since when have I ever done what I’ve been told?” I countered.

He smirked. “You’ve been pretty well behaved for the last several months.”

I scowled, considering leaving just to spite him. I swallowed down my pride, ignoring his statement. “We have a proposition.”

“I assumed as much. Hux won’t settle for anything less than total surrender of the Resistance,” Kylo said, watching me, gauging my reaction.

“I didn’t realize Hux was in charge,” I challenged, goading him.

His eyes narrowed momentarily. “He isn’t. The title of Supreme Leader still falls to me. However, his opinion as my leading general has validity. What can you possibly give me that I couldn’t just take?”

I felt my eyebrows move together and my lips fall in a frown. I could feel my heart clench in my chest as he stared at me, face completely passive, but his eyes piercing me. I could feel it in the Force shimmering between us; he was enjoying the power he had over me, the control.

“We have conditions,” I started, trying to forestall the inevitable, but he interrupted me.

“Expected,” he stated quickly. “Those details can be decided on after your offer is presented.”

I did not answer for a long time. I was trying to control my breathing, feeling it go shallow, not quite reaching my lungs. My panic was mounting with the moment on me. Despite knowing I would die for the men waiting in the brig, this was something else entirely. I was giving them so much more than my life. Before I could lose all sense of bravery in that moment, I whispered, “You get me.”

“What was that, Scavenger?”

I did not repeat myself. Instead my hands curled into fists, focusing on the sensation of my nails biting into my palms to center myself. I refused to say it aloud again. But he refused to relent. “Scavenger, what did you say?”

I had to turn my head, look away from the dawning comprehension on his face. I took several deep breaths, pushing what remained of my resolve to the forefront of my mind. “I said, you get me,” I answered, loud enough I knew he heard me.

He did not answer immediately. The unending silence drove me to finally meet his eyes. He held my gaze and I could feel his Dark tentatively flowing around me, slowly drifting against my mind. “Get out!” I snarled at him.

“Why should I?” he challenged, pushing harder against my Light that solidified over my deeper thoughts.

“Just because we have this deal does not mean you get to do whatever you want to me!” I raised my hand and pushed, feeling a torrent of my Light fly towards him. He slid backwards across the gleaming floor of the hangar.

But he had been ready for my attack. He ground to a stop, not three meters from where he had been standing. But he did not approach me again. He remained where he was, watching me as I breathed heavily through my nose. He was looking at me the same way he had when I awoke on this ship: pity. I wanted nothing more than to find the darkest service-way in the ship and hide there, away from him and Poe and their mounting expectations.

“Is that one of your stipulations?” he asked unexpectedly. He was business once more, arms crossed over his chest, serious expression burying the pity.

“That,” I whispered, internally cringing at my tone, “and a few others.”

“Such as?”

“You give any remaining resistance fighters we find safety as prisoners of war. They’ll come quietly if Poe tells them to. And I refuse to be a weapon for the First Order. I won’t kill for you or become a Knight of Ren,” I answered, my voice firming as I gave out our list.

“And how would any of that benefit the First Order?”

“No more fighting. We’re not blind. We know what we’re up against,” I answered, my heart clenching at the confession. “Poe would never admit it. But he’s been in this is whole life. He doesn’t know what this looks like from the outside looking in.”

“And what,” Kylo said, quietly, approaching me slowly, “does the Resistance look like from the outside?”

He stopped, just a foot away. I could feel his Dark settling around me, hesitant, consciously trying to not startle me. I did not answer him because I felt like I could not breath. This was too much. After years of running, stalling, hiding, biding my time, I was facing the destruction of the Resistance standing in front of me, feeling his Dark lingering over my skin. Behind me, I knew were dozens of people who trusted me, believed I could do everything, save us all from the Dark like Luke Skywalker.

But I was not Luke. I could not save us from the First Order. I could feel the pressure building in my heart and I could not swallow. I had lost my courage to that impossible question because the answer should have been impossible. I closed my eyes to fight the tears that shamefully were floating, ready to fall. I felt lightheaded as all the expectation on me crashed through my mind. My failures to stay hidden, my failure to save these people who were more than family, my failure to be the Jedi that saved the day.

_Breathe_. I felt the Darkness whisper across my mind gently, and I drew air in. Then I drew in another breath. And again, swallowing the knot that had formed at the base of my throat. I felt my mind clear slowly, and I was able to push the pressure back under control, the threat of losing control minimized to a note drifting through my mind. Finally, I opened my eyes again, ready for the pity I knew that would be staring at me once more.

There was no judgement in Kylo’s gaze. I saw myself reflected there momentarily in a way that only someone else who had felt that same crushing self-loathing could understand. The connection clicked in my mind and I realized that my well of disappointment could never be deeper than that of the only Skywalker son left alive.

“Do you accept our terms?” I asked quietly, still not trusting myself to speak.

“The First Order accepts,” he answered, “with one condition.” I seized up again, anticipating the worst as images of slavery, isolation of the remaining Resistance members. “You stipulated that you would not be a weapon, you will not become a Knight of Ren.”

My heart sank and I clung to the Light in my mind as tightly as I could, trying to balance myself against the coming statement that I knew would be an order. I tried to breath as I felt his Darkness begin to stir around me.

“I won’t force you to fight for me or be a Knight of Ren. But I will expect you to train in the ways of the Force. You can have the Jedi texts, and now the resources of the First Order,” he said to me, and a prick of curiosity I could not hold back spread in my mind.

“Why? Why would you want me to become stronger?”

“There is nothing more dangerous than a Force-user without guidance,” he answered, and I could see the lost Ben Solo that had been failed by those around him in that moment. In that moment, I saw more of myself in him than I would have dared to admit. “And while you are not expected to use your knowledge to help the First Order, you will be expected to not hinder either.”

I mulled over his words. The exchange had seemed almost too easy, as if he had suspected this all along. At that thought, my eyes narrowed at him. “Was this your plan?”

“My plan,” he said, his tone shifting to distaste, “is none of your concern.”

With that, he stepped away. His hovering Darkness recoiled away from me quickly, leaving behind a coolness to my skin and mind. I had not realized that my tightly tucked Light had uncoiled and begun to drift around me. At the chill, I snatched it back, a wave of disappointment I could not pin down developing as he turned to walk away.

“You will find the officer assigned to you waiting in the brig, along with the rest of your…contingent. She will show you where they will be staying from now on.” He paused, then turned. “I have two suggestions, Scavenger. Do not cross General Hux. Though he is my subordinate, he follows orders to the letter, allowing for his own personal interpretation.”

His hesitation piqued my curiosity once more. He remained silent for several moments, obviously thinking of how to phrase his next statement, staring hard at me. Finally, he spoke. “And do not cross the Knights of Ren. I am the Master of the Knights of Ren, but the title is nebulous and impermanent. And they are my brothers, first and foremost.” With that, he left the hangar bay.


	6. Chapter Six

“Well, you’re still alive,” Poe noted dryly as the door to our cell slid open. “I was half convinced the ginger bastard would shoot you on sight.” He and the others joined me and the contingent of Storm Troopers that had circled outside the cell. Poe did not give them a second look as he walked with me behind the officer assigned to us.

“I didn’t give him the chance. I never saw Hux,” I replied. I could not quite meet his eyes. I felt disembodied, as if my mind was simply floating outside myself.

“Then how did you get this to happen?”

“You want to get the best loot, you don’t go to the middle man.”

“You met with Ren.”

His tone brought my eyes to his and the worry was plain. “He didn’t do anything to you, did he?” I didn’t need my Light to feel the anxiety and fear trickle from him as his eyes tried to covertly give me a once over.

“No. I’m fine.”

“No one is fine after meeting Kylo Ren,” he said darkly, and he realistically was not wrong. The feeling of not-self was growing, making me feel as if my skin was too tight. “Are you sure? You’re pale, Rey.”

I was becoming somewhat breathless as well. But the officer saved me from answering when she finally stopped at a door. She held her data pad up to the keypad, which pinged in response. She turned to us, speaking for the first time. “These are your communal barracks. You’ll have everything you need here. You will not be allowed to leave the barracks without express per-arrangement with General Hux or the Supreme Leader. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“What are the access codes to the hangar?” Poe asked nonchalantly.

A look of confusion spread across her face momentarily. She hesitated for a moment, shifting her gaze between Poe and I for several moments before turning on her heel and leaving without another word. A small grin tugged at my mouth as Poe gave me a sly wink. He slipped past me, strutting into the barracks as if it were not a slightly bigger, more well-furnished prison than he had previously been in.

The small common room was sparse, containing a few tables and chairs set squarely in the middle. A closed door was tucked in each corner, presumably leading to bunk rooms. The center most table had a holoprojector, a red blinking light signaling a saved message. Poe’s gaze swept across us before he bent to press the play button.

The pinched face of General Hux flickered into life, standing less than a foot tall. Even in such a diminutive state, his look of disdain was clear. “You have been cleared to be treated as prisoners of war rather than terrorists.” Poe snorted. “Under the arrangement settled between your Jedi and the Supreme Leader, you will be allowed certain privileges.”

I tried to keep the surprise from my expression, feeling the stares shift to me. Hesitantly, I extended my Light outside my mind. _What are you getting at?_ There was no answer. I kept my mind open slightly, feeling for him in the ship.

“Pending your cooperation and the cooperation of your Jedi, you will be allotted times outside the barracks in specific areas, such as the mess, gymnasiums, and the like.” Hux’s face was becoming decidedly more and more drawn as he continued to speak, as if he was sucking on a lemon he could not spit out. “Full release and re-integration into society may be granted following negotiations with Resistance leadership following their arrest.”

At that, I allowed my eyes to narrow. _Arrest seems to be an understatement_. Still no response. 

“Such privileges are granted on the condition of your cooperation as prisoners of war. As such, you will not attempt escape. You will not attempt sabotage. This will be your only warning. The first attempt of either will result in immediate detainment and subsequent death of Resistance members on board this vessel and all others found.” With that final, slightly neurotic, statement, the holo disappeared.

“Home sweet home,” a crewman said sarcastically.

“So we lie low for a while,” Poe replied. “Shouldn’t be too difficult.”

I wasn’t quite so sure. I could feel him, tense, waiting. I reached out again and asked, _What sort of cooperation?_

_The remaining members of the resistance will not come quietly on my word alone_ , was his eventual reply. _You’ll have to convince them for me. And there is the matter of your training._ He fell silent and I did not respond. 

My pad pinged, startling me from my apprehension. The screen showed a time table and locations. “It looks like we have our first allowances,” I said.

Poe walked over and I tilted the pad so he could read the screen. “Free access to the mess and gyms,” he muttered. “What are these over here?” His finger traced the lines along the bottom of the schedule. “Medical? Sanitation? Kitchen? Are these…. Are these detail options?”

“The First Order is giving us work?” the engineer scoffed. “Fat chance I’ll take up that offer.”

Poe was still focused on the pad, finger tapping the side of his face. “You know. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get out and about. We’ll go insane locked up in here besides food.” His eyes raised and he met everyone’s eyes. “We’re here right? Might as well see the sights.” Slowly the others nodded. I passed the pad to him and one by one, everyone looked over the work options, signing their names on the line next to it.

“You know they’ll already expect you to do this,” I said lowly, arms crossed, fingers tapping my biceps. “They’re looking for any reason to send you out the airlock.”

“I meant it when I said we’ll lay low,” he answered. “We don’t have the capability of taking the ship. They outman us over a thousand to one. But they can’t help what they say in the halls or in the mess. We stay quiet, keep to ourselves. Listen. And maybe we can figure something out to get out of here.”

Our eyes met and he shrugged. “It’s worth a shot at least.”

I nodded. My head was beginning to pulse and I realized I hadn’t slept in at least a standard day. The low chattering coming from around me was pushing my irritation towards the edge. “I’m exhausted.”

“I think we could all use some sleep,” Poe said, his voice returning to his normal volume, passing my pad back to me.

The crew began to divvy up between rooms and bunks. Poe and I waited until the rest had claimed their space. Poe stayed in the common room with me. “I imagine you haven’t been staying in the brig this whole time.”

“No. I’ve been in a similar cell off an on since I was captured.”

“Off and on?” He asked, eyeing me.

“I don’t always stay in the room. Too quiet.” Despite the relief at finding some living Resistance members, I could not bring myself to say how much I wanted to be away from them.

“I imagine Rey the Jedi could stay here if she would like.”

“I think I’ll stay there tonight. Meditate.” The sensation of not-self was pushing my thoughts in every direction. I could feel the Force fraying around me.

“You sure you don’t want to share?” he asked, winking at me. “We’ve got a great set up here.”

I smiled in spite of my rising tensity, giving him a push with my shoulder. “I’ll pass, thanks.” I walked towards the door.

“Rey.” I turned and Poe was standing by the table in the middle of the room. His face was serious. His tone was cautious. “Be careful. If you need to stay here, you can. If you need anything, you’ve got us now. You’re not alone anymore.”

My throat seized momentarily as my hand froze on the door pad. “I’ll be okay. I’ve been alone for a long time.”

“That wasn’t the plan,” he said. “We didn’t mean for you to be alone for so long. Someone was supposed to get you out. I don’t know what happened.”

“I don’t think any of us knows what happened, Poe,” I answered. “Good night.”

“Good night, Rey.

I couldn’t leave quickly enough. I needed space, time to think. I didn’t want to know that I was supposed to be rescued, only to be abandoned, forgotten.

Unfortunately, space and time were not luxuries I was going to be afforded at the moment. I stepped outside the barracks door and was met by my personal officer. She looked as tired as I felt, and I wondered if I also had large bags under my eyes. “The Supreme Leader would like for you to meet him 1124-B,” she said.

I did not answer immediately. Finally I said, “You can tell the Supreme Leader that I will meet with him tomorrow. I need to sleep.”

Her face drained of color and her eyes went wide. “I am sorry, Lady Rey, but I cannot do that,” she squeaked.

I sighed, raising my face to the ceiling, and rubbing my eyes. “What’s your name?” I asked tiredly.

“Oh, uh, Officer Sari,” she replied.

“One moment, Officer Sari,” I said before bowing my head and opening up to the Force. _I will not meet with you right now. I’m tired and need sleep._

His annoyed reaction was immediate. _Alright then. The officer will retrieve you in the morning_.

_I can get to 1124-B myself. I don’t need a babysitter._

_She will meet you in the morning_. I could almost hear his teeth grating together.

I snapped my connection with the Force closed on him and looked up. Officer Sari was watching me peculiarly. I smiled tiredly at her and asked, “What time would you like to meet me in the morning?”

“Oh, uh, 0700?”

“Sounds like a plan, Officer Sari. Don’t bother going to tell him. Have a good rest of your night.”

I awoke with a jolt at the pinging on my pad. I scrambled to answer it, but it was simply the alarm I had set the night before. Officer Sari would be at my door in half an hour. I swung my body from my bed, stretching the sleep from my muscles and mind. All too quickly, a ping alerted me to Officer Sari’s presence as I tugged the grey shirt over my head.

“You really do not have to escort me to him,” I told her, stepping out of my room. “I can find 1124-B on my own.”

“I really must insist,” she replied. “The Supreme Leader would prefer you to have someone walk with you when available. I have been assigned to you for the purpose of providing support while you are on the _Steadfast_.”

“I could make you walk away,” I said, knowing full well I would not invade her mind.

“Lord Ren said you would infer that you could use the Force to compel me to do or not do certain tasks. He also informed me that you would not in fact use the Force to compel me against my will.”

I must have made a face as her lips lifted in a small smile. “Please do not worry, Lady Rey. This is not an inconvenience or a hassle.” She glanced around us and then leaned forward, despite us being alone in the hallway. “May I be candid, Lady Rey?”

“Of course,” I replied, unable to help myself from also leaning forward.

“I volunteered for this detail. I was curious to meet you,” she said quickly. “I wanted to meet the woman who is the last Jedi; the woman who has bested Lord Ren more than once; the woman who killed Lord Snoke.”

The hairs on my arms stood on end and I leaned back. “I’m really not as impressive as all that makes me sound,” I answered. “We should get going.”

Officer Sari did not answer, nodding and turning to lead the way. We walked in silence side-by-side through the ship. Once more, the occupants of the ship did not acknowledge me, but several women waved or smiled at Officer Sari as they crossed paths. I felt a pang in my chest, seeing her genuinely friendly interactions.

We finally reached 1124, somewhere along the same outskirts of the ship as my room. I placed my hand on the door pad and said, “Thank you for walking me here, Officer Sari. And please. Just Rey.”

Officer Sari nodded. She turned, then hesitated. I watched her momentary internal battle before she turned back to me and said, “Lady- uh, Miss Rey. You said that you aren’t as impressive as I made you out to be.” She hesitated again and I felt my hand clench tightly. She leaned toward me as she had down outside my room, as if she was sharing a secret with me. “If you weren’t that impressive, Lord Ren would not be so intrigued by you.” With that, she spun on her heel and hurried away before I could answer. Officer Sari had turned the corner before I released the breath I had been holding. A subtle anxiety had gripped me at her words. I could feel him beyond, seemingly waiting patiently. I sighed as I pressed my hand against the pad and walked in.

The far wall was a massive window, stretching from the high ceiling down and extending into the floor. A mat rested between the window and me, covering the glass and hiding the stars below. Kylo Ren stood beyond the mat, outlined by the stars. On either side of the door I entered were wooden and metal staffs, sabers, maces, and other weapons. Blasters lined one wall. More doors faced one another across the mat, presumably leading to the other sections of 1124. A catwalk extended the length of the room a story above me. As I stepped in and the door shut behind me, he turned away from the window to face me.

There was a beat of silence as I approached the mat before he asked, “Has the officer assigned to you been helpful?”

“Yes, I like Officer Sari,” I replied. “I still do not need a babysitter. And I do not need to be addressed as ‘lady’ either.”

“With there being over a dozen Resistance operatives free on this ship, the officer is present to head off any possibility of confrontations between Resistance and First Order personnel,” he replied. He stepped up onto the mat from the glass, and I noticed his dressed down appearance. Looser pants and a lighter shirt that revealed his arms. “And by Imperial tradition, all Force-sensitives are referred to as ‘Lord’ or ‘Lady’ within the First Order.”

“The Galactic Empire fell over thirty years ago. Wasn’t it you who said we need to let the past die?”

He smirked at that. “Some habits die hard, _Lady Rey_.”

I instantly felt myself grow red at his low teasing tone. “What are we doing here?” I asked as I began to walk along the mat, eyeing the weapons hanging on the wall. 

“This is the training complex for the Knights of Ren when they are present on the ship. This will be where we will hold your training with the Force. Room B is obviously a physical training space. Room A,” he pointed to behind us as he kept pace with me, “is a meditation space.” We had been walking towards the door leading presumably to Room C. He extended his stride to meet me at the door, hand on the panel. He glanced at me before opening the door.

Within 1124-C was a small workshop with a bench lining the opposite wall. In between the bench and the door were shelves containing dozens upon dozens of little drawers. He motioned me to enter before him and I walked along the shelves to the work bench. Lying on top of it was a small wooden box. As my eyes rested on it, I felt a familiar pull. Without a word or look back at Kylo Ren, I reached forward and slowly opened the lid. Luke’s broken saber rested within the box, along with all the pieces I had been meticulously removing. I found the broken crystal still nestled within the two halves of the saber when I picked them up.

“Room C is our saber workshop, where we build and repair our sabers as necessary,” he said quietly. “Before the Clone Wars, there was a ship where padawans were taken to build their first lightsaber. I tried to recreate that space.”

“And you trust me to build a lightsaber?” I asked lightly, trying to maintain a nonchalant air as my mind raced through the possibilities of parts surrounding me in the little drawers.

“I trust you,” he said carefully, “to not break this tentative truce between us. Your Resistance is not just alive but has some semblance of freedom. You get the resources necessary to continue your training in the Force.”

“And you have control over all of it,” I said, my tone hardened as I carefully placed the saber halves back in the box and shut the lid. 

He did not answer right away. I could feel his Dark convalescing a few paces behind me. I turned to see him leaning against a shelf. His arms were crossed and his face turned towards the wall, brow creased with consideration. “Control in the First Order,” he began, “is a nebulous thing.” He turned to face me. “Leadership within the First Order is a nebulous thing. And with the death of one Supreme Leader, others have become aware that the position may be more available than previously thought.”

I let out a slow breath as he stared at me. “You’ve been in control for years. Snoke has been dead for years.”

“Years is a long time for ambitious people to make ambitious plans,” he answered. “The First Order has a lot of ambitious leadership.”

“Are these ambitious people the reason I have a babysitter?” I asked slowly.

“Yes.”

“You’re not concerned about us escaping,” I said, my voice growing quiet. “You’re concerned about us, about me, being eliminated.”

“Yes.”

My mind was jumping from one thought to the next, firing off possibilities and conclusions. “You want a new apprentice because you can’t trust the others.”

He shrugged at that one. “More so as a contingency plan. The Knights of Ren have not been implicated in any plots against me since my ascension, but much of the leadership has likely had a hand in these plans. The Knights, however, are frequently away on missions across the galaxy and would not be able to help me in case of a coup.”

“Why don’t you eliminate them if you suspect them?”

He grimaced. “Not very Light of you to consider death without reasonable proof.”

“Not very Dark of you to let enemies continue to live,” I retorted.

He shrugged again. “These ambitious people wield an immense collective amount of power across the galaxy. Their home worlds; worlds they have business or political dealings with; others they own; others who own them. Unfortunately, my political capital ends where the reach of the Supreme Leader ends.”

I was silent for several minutes, thinking. “What’s your plan then? There’s more to what’s going on than having a second Force-sensitive person to have your back.”

“Plans are flexible, and before settling on any sort of plan, I needed you first,” he answered. “And while I know you will participate regardless for the sake of our deal, I was hoping you would participate with more… enthusiasm now that you’re aware of the stakes.”

“I need you alive to keep the rest of the Resistance alive,” I said blandly.

“Exactly. And I will do what I can to protect the Resistance safe in order to keep you here.”

“And you need me alive and trained to ensure you have potential backup in case these ambitious people decide to make their move.”

“Exactly.” We sat in silence for a few minutes as I digested the information, staring at the ground without seeing it. The thought of potential disfunction within the ranks of the First Order had not occurred to me. Under any other circumstances, this would be phenomenal news for the Resistance. Unfortunately, the Resistance was stuck directly in the middle. 

“There is another consideration, Rey.” My eyes flicked upward to meet his gaze. “For once in your life, you’re in a position to get almost anything and everything you want. There’s no shame in taking advantage of that fact.”


End file.
